Who is funding the Taliban? We are

Everyone should link to this. Preferably read the damn thing as well.

"It works something like this. There's a construction project funded by the British aid budget - say building a school in some godforsaken patch of dirt, mainly so that a minister can point to it when he wants to claim - falsely, most of the time - that girls are being educated. But the government doesn't build the school, a private firm gets the contract to build it. And a very generous contract, too, which I suppose is fair enough given how dangerous it is to get anything done in that part of the world. In order to get the school built, the contractor then has to bribe local "community leaders" - that goes without saying. But it also has to negotiate with the local Taliban leadership - who insist on a cut of the aid money as their price for not blowing the place (or the workers) to smithereens. So British taxpayer's money goes to the Taliban, who spend it, among other things, on the IEDs which blow up British soldiers instead. 20% is the typical figure, although it's estimated that in some cases the Taliban are raking in as much as 40% of the international aid money."